A recent article details information about
the pending subpeona of (GOP computer technician) Mike
Connell in connection with a transfer of the Ohio election
results server to a partisan server in 2004.

Black
Box Voting has learned that similar results middlemen
are already set up in 2008 for Illinois, Colorado and
Kentucky. At this point citizens need to get on a search
mission for every state to learn the routing of election
results production and publication.

CORROBORATION OF THE
INAPPROPRIATE OHIO CONNECTION

To learn more about the new
discovery of results middlemen in Colorado, Illinois and
Kentucky, scroll down.

First: more on the Ohio subpeona
that is the subject of the article linked above. That
article deals with allegations of an inappropriate middleman
presence in the routing of 2004 Ohio election results. It
does not provide evidence of tampering. The critical kernel
in these stories is that Ohio election results in 2004
appear to have been routed to a partisan
middleman operation before publication.

A screen shot on
ePluribusMedia shows that the Ohio election site was --
oddly -- transferred to Smartech hosting shortly before the
Nov. 2004 election, then transferred back to the state of
Ohio. Even more damning, the election results were again
temporarily transferred to the Smartech server shortly
before the 2006 primary, then transferred back again
afterwards. I have not been able to corroborate the source
data for the screen grab at ePluribusMedia. The screen grab
looks authentic. If authentic, grab your britches for the
wild ride, because that subpoena will be fascinating.

The
extreme partisanship and inappropriatness of Smartech as a
server for anything to do with government elections is easy
to corroborate. By paying a couple hundred bucks at WhoIs,
you'll see that the Smartech site hosts dozens of sites that
could not be more partisan: numerous sites for the
Republican National Committee, many anti-Obama propaganda
sites (but no anti-McCain sites and no Democratic sites);
Republican candidate domains; over a dozen sites from
various domains owned by "Prosperity for America", a
partisan think tank that traces back to principals from an
enormous privately held oil company Koch
Industries.

Perhaps most concerning, Smartech also hosts
the Voter Vault sites. Voter Vault is the powerful data
mining Republican database which can tell you what kind of
syrup you like on your french toast, who you vote for, every
address you've ever lived, and which magazines are your
favorite. Black Box Voting has obtained corporate documents
showing that Voter Vault was set up by Bruce Boram, a
political operative who got into hot water in Washington
State for deceptive political activities.

MAN IN THE
MIDDLE RESULTS CONTAMINATION

The Spoonamore affidavit
referenced in the Ohio lawsuit deals only with theoretical
issues. It should not be characterized as evidence that
anything in particular occurred. It describes one man's
concept of what could potentially occur, based on a set of
assumptions that are not necessarily accurate.

This could
steer away from what the results middleman may actually have
been doing, which could be as simple as waylaying results
for "first look". Private, secret "first looks" are
exceptionally dangerous because it is common for subsets of
results to be delayed for various reasons. Gaining "first
look" enables operatives to contact those with custody of
the delayed returns to relay details for precisely how much
is needed to alter the outcome.

As Spoon postulates,
electronic man in the middle attacks are possible under
certain scenarios. He describes an attack which travels
backwards down the pipeline to alter contents inside the
voting system; a simpler method may be to just change the
published report, letting locals with inside access make the
necessary adjustments on their end.

RESULTS MIDDLEMEN IN
COLORADO, KENTUCKY AND ILLINOIS

The Illinois middleman is
connected with a partisan evangelical Baptist named David
Davoust, who owns Robis, Inc. -- a firm that sells an
electronic handheld device for pollworkers called "Ask Ed".
Davoust controls the Internet domain names for a variety of
churches, for DuPage County Elections chief Robert Saar's
personal Web site, for the DuPage County Results site, and
for the DuPage County Elections Board. But it doesn't stop
there:

Davoust also controls a number of domain names for
GBS, which stands for Governmental Business Services. This
entity sells and programs Diebold/Premier voting systems and
also produces and publishes results for 17 counties in
Illinois. GBS purchased Fidlar Election Services, which in
turn controls results for a total of 27 Illinois counties
and one in Indiana. In 2006, it also listed four Iowa
counties.

According to the GBS Web site, GBS was at one
point acquired by Business Records Corp (BRC). What GBS
doesn't mention: BRC was acquired by voting machine
manufacturer Election Systems & Software in 1997. It's hard
to understand why an apparent subsidiary of ES&S is
producing Diebold election results and has a domain name
owned by a guy named David Davoust, but we're
trying.

According to the Illinois Secretary of State Web
site, Fidlar's registered agent is Ernest Riggens, who joins
the odd-name parade in which Diebold spokesperson Chris
Riggall is marching, along with Riggins, Idaho which is the
current residence of embezzler/voting machine programmer
Jeffrey Dean.

KENTUCKY

In May 2007, Kentucky voting
machine programmer Harp Enterprises, owned by Roger Baird,
was involved in secret negotiations to purchase the firm
that does many Kentucky county Web sites. Roger Baird, owner
of Harp Enterprises, is found in corporate documents also
controlling the LLC for this firm, indicating that the deal
was consummated. Harp programs the voting machines, prints
the ballots, and provides election day technicians; Baird's
other firm provides web sites and election results for
Kentucky counties.

COLORADO

The Colorado middleman is
the most troubling situation. LEDS, LLC has obtained a
contract giving access into every voting system in Colorado,
and this firm, run by a Castle Rock man named John Paulsen,
is now tasked with preparing the results for the Colorado
secretary of state.

Problem is, Paulsen is involved in an
ethics scandal right now which has just led to the
resignation of the Colorado Elections Director. According to
an article in the Rocky Mountain News, there's a little
matter of a

half-million-dollar condo owned by Paulsen
that state Elections Director Holly Lowder was living in,
with no one being properly apprised of the residential
arrangement as they did the deals.

I don't get the shivers much
anymore, having looked at a lot of election situations that
no American should have to see, but that contract made me
feel like a bully was stealing all our lunch money.

NEXT
STEPS

I will be sending out an alert about these
middlemen, with links to more documents, as soon as we have
the new training video for Protect the Count completed,
which is scheduled to go live on YouTube on
Wednesday.

"PROTECT THE COUNT" ACTIONS WILL HELP PROTECT
RESULTS FROM CONTAMINATION BY MIDDLEMEN

If citizens DO the
Poll Tape Posse action on the upcoming Protect the Count
video (capturing video of the results on the voting machine
results tapes BEFORE they leave the polling place, posting
on YouTube) this will kick the legs out from under man in
the middle attacks.

Black Box Voting has developed
training and infrastructure to upload snapshots and
contribute links to video of poll tapes, but we are NOT
going to attempt to organize this.

I have been involved in
many conference calls to collaborate with other
organizations on this, but we should not assume that it's
getting done -- EVERY CITIZEN NEEDS TO TAKE INTIATIVE ON
PROTECT THE COUNT ACTIONS, which vary according to the
counting system used in your location. Please get ready for
action. Plan to be out in the field for 90 minutes on
Election Night.

Stay
tuned.

*************

ENDS

Bev Harris is the
founder of BlackBoxVoting.org, one of the country's
first public interest groups focused on electronic vote
count fraud and reform of the voting
process.

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